At Home in Mitford (6 page)

At eleven o’clock, he had a welcome phone call. “Tim, Hal here. I heard what’s going on with the painting, and in case you’re feeling sick and tired of the whole thing, I’d like to give you a prescription.”

He didn’t know how he felt about receiving medical care from a vet.

“Here it is: Be ready at eight o’clock in the morning, and I’ll pick you and Barnabas up in the truck. We’ll spend the day at Meadowgate, chasing rabbits and looking for woodchucks. For supper, Marge’ll make a big chicken pie, and I’ll bring you back in time to get your beauty sleep for church on Sunday.”

If he had gotten a call to say he’d won the lottery, he couldn’t have been happier. Thank heaven he’d worked all week on his sermon, thereby giving him the freedom of an entire Saturday.

He drank two full mugs of coffee, which was unusual, with cream, which was even more unusual, and, according to Emma, spent the rest of the morning “chattering like a magpie.”

Meadowgate Farm was situated in one of the most beautiful valleys around Mitford. Just ten miles from the village, the land began to roll steeply, looking like the pictures he had seen of Scotland.

A flock of sheep grazed in one green pasture, across the fence from a herd of contented Guernseys. The white blossoms of wild bloodwort gleamed along the roadsides, and here and there the bank of an old farmplace was massed with creeping pink phlox.

You leadeth me beside still waters! he thought happily. You restoreth my soul!

It was a glorious morning, drenched with birdsong, and as they turned into the drive, a horde of farm dogs came bounding toward the red truck. There was Buckwheat, an English foxhound. Bowser, a chow. Baudelaire, a soulful dachshund. Bodacious, a Welsh corgi. And Bonemeal, a mixed-breed foundling who, as a puppy, had dug up the new tulip bulbs in order to eat the fertilizer.

The rector opened his door cautiously, and Barnabas dived into the barking throng. Was it possible his hearing could be permanently impaired? “Let ’em get acquainted,” Hal said.

At the back door, Marge gave Father Tim a vigorous hug, which he returned with feeling.

“Tim! You’ve got your annual planting tan!”

“And you’ve got your perennial joi de vivre!”

In the center of the kitchen was a large pine table, bleached by age, with benches on either side. A Mason jar of early wildflowers sat in the center, along with a deep-dish apple pie, fresh from the oven. A dazzling beam of light fell through the windows that looked out to the stables.

Their guest stood transfixed. “A foretaste of heaven!” he said, feeling an instant freshness of spirit.

“Sit,” said Marge, whose blonde hair was captured in a bandanna the color of her dress. “We’ll start with freshly ground coffee and cinnamon stickies. Then, I’ve packed lunches, because I hear you guys are going tromping in the woods.”

" ’Til we drop,” promised Hal, lighting his pipe. “Tim has some heavy-duty stress to contend with. Holy Week, two Easter services, a Vermeer, a new dog the size of a Buick, fourteen azaleas to get in the ground, and,” he looked at Father Tim, “there must be something else.”

“A bone spur in my left heel,” he said, cheerfully.

At two-thirty, Marge rang the farm bell, and the men came at a trot across the early spring field with Barnabas, Bowser, and Buckwheat dashing ahead. The bell rang only for an emergency.

“Trissie Steven’s pony. Caught in a barbed wire fence. Bleeding badly,” Marge said in the telegraphic way she had of communicating urgent news to her husband.

“Want to come or stay, Tim? Your call.”

“Oh, stay!” said Marge. “We haven’t had a good visit in a hundred years. Besides, you’ve been talking man talk all day. Let’s talk peonies and rosebushes, for heaven’s sake.”

His breathing was ragged from the trot across the field. “Well,” he said, lamely, thinking of downing a glass of Marge’s sweetened iced tea.

“I’m off,” Hal said, kissing his wife on the cheek.

Marge cleared the remains of the pastry she’d rolled out for the pie, while the chicken simmered on the stove. “Sit down and talk to me while I finish up. The tea’s in the pitcher, and fresh peppermint. A few shoots are already out; that tall grass by the garden shed kept it protected over the winter.”

He poured the tea, got ice from the refrigerator, and sat down in the rocking chair that had belonged to Marge’s father.

It was balm to his soul to sit in this beamed, high-ceilinged room, with its wonderful smells and golden, heart-of-pine floors. At Meadowgate Farm, he mused, nothing terribly dramatic ever seemed to happen. Life appeared to flow along sweetly, without many surprises or obstacles to overcome.

Marge sat down on the window seat and tucked her hair into the bandanna. He thought she looked unusually bright, radiant.

“Did Hal tell you?”

“Tell me? Tell me what?”

Perhaps their Annie was getting engaged, he thought. Or maybe Hal had finally come across with their much-discussed vacation in France, to celebrate her fiftieth birthday.

“I’m pregnant,” she said simply, wiping her hands on her apron.

After dinner, which the rector pronounced “the finest yet,” the men washed the dishes. Then they all gathered before a small fire on the kitchen hearth.

Hal and Marge sat on the slouchy, chintz-covered sofa, which the dogs usually favored, and held hands like sweethearts. Bowser and Baudelaire slept peacefully by the fire, and Barnabas slept with his head on his master’s feet.

The rector lifted a glass of Hal’s oldest port.

“To Marge, the bravest of the brave! May you be blessed with a child who is full of grace and merriment, and endowed with the countenance of its lovely mother.”

“Thanks, but I’m not brave, at all. I’m scared silly. I keep thinking Hoppy will call and say, ‘Ha, ha, just kidding. You can go back to your real life, now.’”

Barnabas gave a little dream bark.

“Chasing squirrels,” said Hal. “You know, I think you’ve got yourself a fine dog, there. His character appears to reveal the wolfhound in him. There’s an old story that says a wolfhound can tell by looking on a man’s face whether his intentions are good or evil.”

“A trait devoutly to be desired by the rest of us,” said the rector, with a new pride in his companion.

“Read to us, Timothy. You’ll have to be leaving in an hour or so, and you know how I covet a read before you go.” Marge fluffed up the pillow behind her and leaned cozily against her husband’s shoulder.

She had put several books on the table next to his chair. “First come, first served,” he said cheerfully, and opened a volume at random.

“ ‘Up! up! my Friend, and quit your books,’ ” he read from Wordsworth, “ ‘Or surely you’ll grow double: Up! up! my Friend, and clear your looks; Why all this toil and trouble?’ ”

As Father Tim read, Barnabas awoke, yawned, and began to listen with rapt attention.

Barnabas sighed with what appeared to be satisfaction, and gazed at the reader as if waiting for more.

“Remarkable dog,” said Hal.

Much to his relief, little mention of the painting came to his ears during Holy Week.

Palm Sunday had been a blessing to the congregation, and on Maundy Thursday, he had truly experienced a deep and enriching mournfulness. On Good Friday he fasted, and on Holy Saturday felt much the better for it in every way.

Easter morning dawned bright and clear. “Dazzling to the senses!” said one parishioner. The beautiful old church was full for both services, and the tremor of joy that one always hoped for on this high day was decidedly there.

Perhaps one of the highest points, for him, had been looking out into the eleven o’clock congregation and seeing Miss Sadie sitting with Louella and her grandson. The countenances of all three were radiant, which created a special pool of light on the gospel side.

After church, Louella grabbed him and gave him a bosomy hug.

“That’s some good ham you baked,” she said. “We got into it las’ night, with the Jell-O. An’ Miss Sadie goin’ to run it by us again today.”

Hal and Marge were there, their good news shining in their eyes.

Emma wore a hat with a Bird of Paradise on one side and was proudly showing off her daughter from Atlanta. And Miss Rose and Uncle Billy, usually partial to the Presbyterians, attended their first service at Lord’s Chapel.

He saw faces he’d never seen before, and would never see again, and faces that had become as familiar as his own. It had been a good twelve years in Mitford.

During the days following Easter Sunday, he noticed a certain lassitude of spirit in himself. He would go to his back door and gaze at the azaleas, which he’d left sitting along the bank in their potting cans.

There was still a flat of pansies to be planted, and a dozen rare, pink daylilies.

But the joy he’d felt in gardening, only days before, seemed to have vanished. A letdown was to be expected after the intense activities of high holy days.

He went to the library at noon and sat, idly reading, wanting a nap, forgetting to have lunch. At last, he forced himself to check out the latest Dick Francis, a book on dog breeds, a volume of Voltaire, and Maeterlinck’s
Intelligence of the Flowers.
He felt so exhausted from selecting the books that he did something entirely out of the ordinary: he phoned Emma to say he was going home.

“I’m calling Hoppy this minute,” she said, alarmed.

“There’s nothing to worry about in the least. I’m just a little tired, that’s all. I expect to be there bright and early in the morning.”

“Well, it’s my day off, you know, but I’ll come in at ten to check on you. I’ve found us a new kind of Little Debbies, and I’ll bring you a box.”

He couldn’t summon the energy to argue with her. He also noted, vaguely, that her offer of one of his favorite sweets had no appeal.

By the time he reached the new men’s store a block away, he regretted having checked out the books he was carrying, especially the Voltaire, which suddenly felt like the complete works.

Miss Rose and Uncle Billy lived on Mitford’s Main Street, in one room of a house that was variously called “a disgrace,” “an eyesore,” and “a crying shame.”

The house had been built in the late 1920s by Miss Rose’s brother, Willard Porter, who invented and sold pharmaceuticals.

His biggest seller, a chest rub, had added the second story, the wooden shutters with cutouts of a dove, a wraparound porch, and a widow’s walk. There was an ornate gazebo, large enough for dances, that had commemorated the success of a flavored lip balm. And four sculptured stone garden benches with carved angels’ heads, sitting in what once was a majestic rose garden, had marked the debut of a cough syrup containing mountain herbs.

The house had historically been the pride of the village, sitting as it did on the edge of the old town green, across from the war monument, and displaying the finest architecture of its time.

In recent years, however, all that had changed. The stone benches with carved angels’ heads were crumbling to dust. Many of the shutters lay in the grass where they had fallen. And Uncle Billy had nailed a
No Trespassing
sign on the widow’s walk.

A decorator from Raleigh had often tried to buy the Porter place for a second home, thinking how spectacular it would be for parties. When all efforts to buy it through Mule Skinner had failed, she took it upon herself personally to visit Miss Rose and Uncle Billy, who were sitting in the backyard in two chrome dinette chairs, at a wooden spool previously used to roll up electric wiring. They were eating bologna sandwiches and drinking iced tea from jelly glasses.

Miss Rose wiped her mouth on a threadbare T-shirt that said
I surfed Laguna Beach.

“I’m Susan Parnell Phillips,” the intruder informed them, with more eagerness than was necessary.

“This is Rose,” said Uncle Billy, “and I’m the thorn.”

At that, Uncle Billy grinned broadly, showing all three of his teeth, one of which was “covered with enough gold to reroof the house,” as a neighbor once said.

Miss Rose glowered at the visitor. “I’m not selling.”

“Selling? But how did you—I mean, what makes you think I’m buying?”